I know many of you will choose to watch for yourselves, but I have a compulsion to do write ups. Not that I can do justice to Mary or Jamie’s sense of humor. :)

Matt Roush, in addition to being a great critic (and how rare is that?) is a great fan. He’s just so excited about being there and pimping a show he loves. I think my favorite Matt moment may have been when he brought up how he hasn’t had to defend his opinion of a show so much since ‘Buffy’.

Oh, and is Apollo compared to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal outside of LJ? Matt talked about it as if it’s a thing in fandom. Interesting.

Ron and David didn’t say much that we haven’t read or heard in interviews before. A few things worthy of mention.....the year jump was intriguing to Ron because it hadn’t been done before. I get that – the challenge of trying something new and making it (hopefully) work. We will be getting flashbacks and/or mentions in episodes as to what happened in that ‘missing’ year. Human looking Cylons were originally dictated by budget constraints. And Caprica will be set 50 years before the current storyline, before the last Cylon war, and we’ll see the creation of the first Cylons. Assuiming it gets made.

There was one interesting question posed to them from the audience - why did Gina blow up Cloud Nine? Ron’s answer surprised me because I don’t feel we got waht he was explaining on screen. Apparently, Gina helped put Baltar in the presidency because she wanted to destroy all of them (the humans). It was about vengeance for her and when the fleet found a refuge that she could be no part of, she chose to die and take as many with her as possible. Is it just me, or did Tricia not play it that way? Gina just came across as broken and lost to me. I felt sorry for her Ron!

Jamie was in good humor throughout. When asked where there characters will be at the start of the season he responded with, "My character is in Jenny Craig right now…without her I’d be nothing." He also commented about Lee finding the Twinkie cabinet and, interestingly, he doesn’t know what it says about his relationship with Dualla. And he had no clue why Lee put on the weight until he filmed a recent episode. What do you know? The show is going to address it!

He also made a crack about how when David called him to tell him he got the role that he was sending him a trainer to lose twenty pounds and get in shape (he was out of shape???). At the end of last season it was David who told him he was going to put on 25 pounds.

And he believes the first four episodes of this coming season are the best work they’ve ever done. We’ll see.

Mary and Jamie talked mostly about their respective characters. She mentioned that working on the show has influenced her military and political views, making her a bit more understanding. Mary also explained that now that Laura isn’t sick anymore, Laura’s not sure what to do. She has moments when she’s happy and she’s not sure how to deal with that and it’s something she hopes to explore more.

In a ‘You can’t joke like that’ moment, Mary expressed that another way that things have changed is that she and Adama now have two children. The audience went completely silent until she told them it was a joke. Though she said, with the Cylon DNA, who knows? ;) She went on to say that Laura’s relationship with Adama has a more natural quality and fewer issues…for the moment. (I have to say, it seems that the actors have no idea what is going to happen beyond the episode they are currently filming.)

Eddie talked mostly about the show and how great Ron and David are. He was more serious than Jamie and Mary, though he did have a few amusing moments. He explained that the hair and makeup people get pre pre-production scripts and know what’s going on before the actors do so they hang out in the makeup trailer to find out what’s happening. He was asked to appear in the ‘Miami Vice’ movie and was thrilled to be able to say “No, I’m doing Battlestar Galactica”, he then turned to David and Ron and said they saved his life. After doing ‘Blade Runner’ he passed on all other sci-fi offers including playing Riker on ST:TNG. I did not know that. And he claims that BSG is the #1 show in the world, but I question that statement.

A couple of random bits…Jamie was asked how hard it is to do the accent. He said it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to maintain it and act at the same time. He explained you can lose your natural expressiveness because you are concentrating so much on the voice. This made sense to me because there are moments on the show where his reactions seem a little too mannered to me. And instead of submitting an episode for each actor for Emmy consideration, Sci-Fi sent out a box set of the entire second season to voters. They aren’t sure if that was a good idea or bad idea yet.

Thanks for the write up! I probably won't be able to watch the webcast til next week, when I'm visiting a friend who has DSL. :)

Apparently, Gina helped put Baltar in the presidency because she wanted to destroy all of them (the humans). It was about vengeance for her and when the fleet found a refuge that she could be no part of, she chose to die and take as many with her as possible. Is it just me, or did Tricia not play it that way? Gina just came across as broken and lost to me. I felt sorry for her Ron!

Wow, no kidding, that is not how it came across at all, and I don't think I read any fan reaction that read it that way either. I thought Gina just wanted to die, and if people got killed in the process, even better. Sure she obviously had rage against humanity b/c of the way she was treated on Pegasus, but that hadn't been depicted much by the end of the season. I don't think the Gina storyline was handled that well in those last few episodes - seemed like there was a lot of potential there, but she just kinda disappeared for a while and then she was on again and we didn't really know what was going on with her.

he believes the first four episodes of this coming season are the best work they’ve ever done.

Jamie was also really excited about Black Market so....I'm not holding my breath. :) But I do think the show has lots of exciting things to tackle next season, so I think we'll see some good stuff.

I don't recall reading any fan reaction regarding Gina that mirrored Ron's opinion either. My take was very similar to yours. I thought her actions were a combination of being so damaged that she no longer had the will to live and wanting revenge against humanity that so mistreated her. But I didn't view her actions as a grand plan on her part from the time she escaped Pegasus. I thought she wanted Baltar in office to further her cause and when he won and she saw that he wasn't the person/hope that she believed him to be, she gave up, in spectacular fashion.

Thanks for the link, got through everything up to the Q&A before I left for work.

Brief Observations:David was more impressed with him than before. Seemed to have a vision that wasn't all about himself. Then there was Ron... next. ;-)Jamie has a very dry sense of humor.Mary loves to laugh.Eddie is a serious humorist. The whole "all washed up" bit, plus the talk of his work in Blade Runner (even how Ridley recently called him with the news of the other new cut) and his statement about Bush not making any change to how he's running the country (makes great source for the show); shed more light on EJO, whom I've always had a high opinion of.

Just watched it... I'm so in love with those actors, man. And maybe it's just my annoyance with him, but doesn't RDM look skeevy? No wonder he keeps giving everyone pornstaches. Lots of cool stuff in there, though, and Matt Roush is so cute. He always likes the shows I like. :)

And Jamie looked so nice! Not a questionable t-shirt in sight. ;D I have heard the Prince Hal comparison outside LJ, though I can't remember where, for sure--it might even have been Roush.

RDM's explanation of the Gina thing made no sense whatsoever, at least in the context of how Tricia played things. Did Gina ever encourage Baltar to run for president? I don't remember that at all. In any case, to characterize her relationship with Baltar as being strictly a revenge thing totally undermines Tricia's excellent, nuanced performance, and the connection between Gina and Baltar that's one of the only redeeming things Baltar has ever been a part of (though of course he ultimately did it for selfish reasons).

I loved their total underestimation of what people know about the show, on the trivia questions. Heh. Have you MET sci-fi fans?!

Gina did encourage Baltar to run for president at some point. Or was that in the previouslies of scenes we never saw in the actual eps? Baltar, at the time, was freaked out by that notion of power. But I never got that it was a grand scheme on her part to try to destroy all of humanity. She loved Baltar, but when she saw that he wasn't going to bring about the change she hoped for, she gave up, and got her revenge the only way she could.

Jamie cracked me up with his question for the audiance. That guy was so eager to answer that he didn't let him get to part 2 of the question. And then after the guy answered part 1, Jamie said something like, "OK, not tell me what part 2 is." :)

Hi there, I'm not sure how I happened upon your journal... hope you don't mind me commenting. I was at the MR&T event last week and after writing up everything I could remember in my lj I found your write up of the webcast. It was great to read what you got out of it, because some of the things you mentioned, I didn't even remember. I have since watched the webcast to see everything I missed. I saw the Season 3 teaser and it was full of spoilery things, unfortunately it all happened so fast I can only remember a few things. I wrote them up in my lj too if you are interested, as well as the interesting choice of wording they put on the l/k poster that was at the event. I'm still trying to understand that. cheers.